Data from the sensor has to be processed. It can be processed through hardware or it can be processed through software. Hardware processing is at least an order of magnitude faster than software processing, but at the expense of flexibility.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. My understanding is that hardware is essentially useless without software instructing it what to do. You can't really have functionality without both being present.

Some software can be implemented in hardware. This is often done through custom IC's, usually ASIC's where "gates are blown" during configuration to create a custom chip... once you configure it, you are stuck with that configuration, although some chips are re-writeable... Image processing tends to allow massivly parallel operations and this type of processing lends itself well to hardware acceleration. some operations that require a hundred or so opertations in software can be done in one clock cycle in hardware. A still camera is optimized for still image processing, a video camera is optimized for encoding the change between two sucessive images.

Wow. Thanks for sharing that. Must be one of the very best marketing videos I have ever seen. It is long, but I watched it all, and I want one!! I have no idea what I would do with it, but it definitely has that cool factor! I am really looking forward to GoPro 4 coming out I can watch that marketing video.

lol +1 - sure would have liked to have a gopro3 back when I was young enough to do crazy things rather than just document them Granted, the OP might be trolling and granted, the GoPro is a one trick pony, but what a trick... Only little more than 10 years ago, a 10$ dispossable camera seemed like such luxury faced with the alternative of absolutely NO way of documenting our epic failings in the alps... oh well.... blabla and then some, when one resorts to reading these posts its too late or too bored better put the cap back on the bottle and hit the sack